Doubts over security chief.

(From The Slovak Spectator)

FRANTISEK Blanarik, the head of Slovakia's National Security Office (NBU), probably informed on an army colleague during the communist era, documents unearthed from the former Czechoslovak Army Counter-intelligence (VKR) archives suggest. TV Markiza reported the archive find on November 26.

The NBU conducts security checks and issues security clearances, known as licences, authorising people to work with classified information. NATO required that the NBU be set up as part of Slovakia's accession to the military alliance, in order to ensure that sensitive information would remain secure.

During the communist regime, Blanarik was a professional soldier. TV Markiza alleged in its report that, according to the archive documents, he started collaborating with army counter-intelligence as a "confidant" in the 1970s.

Markiza quoted from Blanarik's file, which states: "As a VKR confidant, he had very good results; he willingly and eagerly handed over facts characterising the ethical-political state of the troops trained."

According to Markiza, in 1980 Blanarik underwent several months of training at the Intelligence Institute of the Intelligence Administration of the General Staff. "At the Intelligence Institute, he partially improved his expert knowledge of intelligence- and counter-intelligence work," Blanarik's file says, according to Markiza.

From 1981, he worked at an army unit in Levice. He was allegedly deployed there to inform on his colleague and friend, Ladislav B., who was suspected by counter-intelligence of having secretly hosted a family visiting from West Germany. Blanarik's role was to confirm the information, according to the archived documents.